The Tennis Scottish Culture

Introduction

Sport is one of the most important activities in Scotland, and it is very present in the Scottish culture. Nowadays more and more Scottish people become famous in a lot of different sport.

Tennis is one of the older racket sport invented, its history dates to the middle- age. First of all, what are the origins of the word? Exactly at the middle-age people played “jeu de paume”, and the server had to warn his adversary when he threw a ball screaming this French word “tenez”, in hold French the word was “Tenèts”. When English people borrowed the game, they heard “Tenis”, which became “Tennis”. Thus the Tennis is an English adaptation of “jeu de paume”.

Nowadays, there is only one representative player for Scotland, Andy Murray who turned professional in 2005, he is considered like one of the best player of the Scotland history. Actually among the three best players in the world to the ATP rank, He expects to become the first Scottish world number one.

Now it is going to look at in the first part to the tennis history especially in Scotland, then in the second part, it’s going to observe why the tennis is not too popular, and why there are few professional players.

1) Origins and history of the Tennis in Scotland

Let’s start with the authentic tennis history, which start the 23rd February 1874. This day Walter Clopton Wingfield, sold to the guild chamber of London a new “jeu de paume” court and made a patent on it. However, after more research, we can realize that in 1539, that is to say about 300 years before, King James V of Scotland built the first Scottish Real tennis court at Falkland Palace. More precisely, the building began in April 1539 and was finish in September 1541, but unfortunately he was able to play for only one year, because he died in December 1542 at Falkland Palace.

Thus thanks to King James V, in Scotland at the time the court was built, tennis was known by the Scots word “Caich”, and the tennis court was...